


Things You Left Behind

by rainedparade



Category: Animorphs - Katherine A. Applegate
Genre: 10 Things, Alternative Interpretations, Book 54: The Beginning, Introspection, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-17
Updated: 2017-02-17
Packaged: 2018-09-25 03:17:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,572
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9800444
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rainedparade/pseuds/rainedparade
Summary: (or: things privy only between parasite and host)





	

**Author's Note:**

> This is a kind-of continuation of my last work (Quasi-Matrimony), except it takes place primarily during the last book.

1.

Alloran had struggled. _Had_ struggled. But one can wage a private pointless war for days and weeks and months. But years? Decades? At a certain point, though he never gives up hope, he stops seeing himself as an active participant.

-

2.

Esplin helps this transition, as much as an unwanted voice in one's head can help. He speaks of always and forever, of us and our, of a relationship where neither one will emerge unscarred. And somewhere, somewhere between his vile affection and neigh-dormant kindness, Alloran finds himself sinking beneath the waves.

-

3.

It is terrifying, to have grown a second conscience overnight. And though this mind rarely provided good advice, it was still capable of seeing and knowing everything which passed through his mind. Someone he could not be apart from, could neither bluff nor lie. Someone who had access to Alloran, not just the War Prince, in entirety.

It's an aspect to the nightmare of infestation that isn't nearly underscored enough, he thinks.

-

4.

The disgust and fear he feels from Alloran is both understandable and natural, but it does not stop the irritating sting any less. Here, finally, in a host suited to his ethic and intellect, one which could not only understand his machinations, but improve upon them. Someone who fought tooth and nail and yet was capable of being reasoned with and who, Esplin hoped, would eventually be an asset in itself.

And of course he would have had a hand in sending the Yeerks to the stars; of course he would know Yeerks as well as Esplin knew Andalites and find them -- the whole of them, Esplin included -- a bane on civilization. Of course.

-

5.

The bitterness which had always been there is amplified after Alloran's infestation. Suddenly there are two dark voices in his mind asking questions which he himself had asked.

Had he not been tasked with stopping the Yeerk menace at any cost? Was the burden of his Prince's sin not weighed on his own tail? Didn't the idiots sitting safely light-years away in their high command realize that a _war_ was being fought and it was fought over bodies, over hosts?

The unspoken agreement, even before his fall from grace, was to send Alloran, if one wanted the job 'done'. Not done right, or done to a civilian-approved level of culpability, but _done_.

Imagine what would have happened if you came back with the Time Matric, Esplin whispers, running through a cinema of scenarios. Alloran had hoped that he could somehow right things with the Matrix, that the Council would see the error of their judgment, that he might be a proper hero amongst his people, someone his wife would be glad to have married --

Except then Esplin shows him the more likely outcome and something like hate begins to fester. Not for the parasite (no, he had always felt hate towards the intruder) but towards his own species.

-

6.

In looking so far beyond what was possible, there had to be something wrong with him. One did not stumble into the epithet 'Andalite-expert' without some significant personal failing, after all.

His fellow Yeerks had been content to meet them in battle, seeing no chance at advancing much less conquering. But as soon as he had infested Seerow's daughter, that girl Aldrea, he realized he could be satisfied with no other form. How one ever -- ever -- expect him to go back to being a slow-moving senseless slug amongst millions of poolmates after experiencing the evolutionary _marvel_ that was the Andalite?

How had he lived without fingers, without arms, without hooves and flanks and shoulders? How had he lived without eyes, without a tail -- without the ability to change forms with greater ease than their kind could change hosts?

Even without taking into account the blessings of Escafil, there was a world of difference between Andalite and Yeerk. Infesting Alloran underscored this time and again, until something like shame began to eat away at him and his host's revulsion to his own kind began to seep into him. More and more often, Esplin found himself recoiling at the sight of fellow Yeerks in their natural state. Found himself experiencing Alloran's sick glee when he morphed to Varnax and performed a public execution.

Yes, that's it, he snarled -- losing himself, somewhat -- die Yeerk scum, die!

(It was undoubtably self-loathing which made him seek glory.)

-

7.

To his everlasting shame, he had felt pride -- yes, actual unadulterated _pride_ \-- whenever Esplin turned an ear to his musings and followed through with his advice. He had been a ranked member of the Andalite military for years after all, had been fighting battles before most of the current combatants had been formed, and after a decade of silence and sulking and fending off feelings which were half his own, it was nothing short of cathartic to be able to use the skills which he had honed with such pride, to see the results of victory yet again on the battlefield.

It would have been more enjoyable if he were fighting for the People, but he consoled himself (or had Esplin consoled him? either way, at that point in their relationship, it was becoming difficult to differentiate who said what) with the knowledge that he was not fighting against the People. And if he -- or rather, Esplin -- were somehow defeated but taken alive, than the knowledge would surely go on for the greater good, wouldn't it? And perhaps the Council would somehow -- again -- rescind their judgment and give him back his honor and --

(Alloran will never admit it, but the ethics and morals of the Yeerkish side align closer with his own than those of the People.)

-

8.

More than wanting to subjugate the peoples of Earth, more than wanting to seize the title from Visser One and perhaps even the throne from the Emperor -- more than wanting to see the Andalites eat their hooves and gifting every Yeerk with a host body -- Esplin wanted _this_.

He wanted their time together to never end.

After decades spent in Alloran, with Alloran, _as_ Alloran, he had difficulties separating them and had already begun to fear the inevitable end. Were he faced with a more suitable host, he would have to kill the other. Alloran knew far too much. But then what if the next Andalite were not so -- understandable? He would have to reacquire his menagerie of morphs (some of which were impossible to re-obtain as he had ordered the species extinguished) to start, and break into a whole new set of hooves.

And on the other hand, Alloran would inevitably die one day, and perhaps he would even, somehow, escape and defect. The hope of being captured was still alive and well, despite their almost-amenable conversations.

More than that... yes, more than anything... he wants Alloran brought over completely to the Yeerkish cause. He wants to be able to slip out and in of the other without restraints and drugs and threats. He wants to be seen as an equal, not a leech, and he wants Alloran's talent for battle and taste for bloodshed to be turned on his own people. What would he have to do, he wonders -- often and at length -- for such a reversal? If such a price, if such a scenario, existed, he would bring it about at all costs.

-

9.

‹I do not know if you are aware of this,› Esplin begins conversationally, when it is just the two of them in the control room and the end is pulpable and neigh, ‹But the concept of togetherness is quashed with the first host.›

And then, because Alloran is naturally interested in the ongoings of the monitors, he continues without prompting: ‹We do of course have parents and poolmates. But the former die in creating us and the latter are far too many to recall... well,› he laughs in an uncharacteristically self-deprecating fashion here, ‹It goes without saying that we have a tendency to grow attached to our hosts. They are, by and large, the longest relationships we shall ever cultivate, unbidden with the promise of death that comes from mated triples.›

And Alloran -- nearly too far gone and a traitor even in his own mind -- does not reply, only runs over scenarios which Esplin (which _they_ ) might use to escape. The emergency chutes, the private Bug Fighter, an unimaginably small morph, and so forth.

‹I'm touched,› Esplin confesses when he is perusing the reason for the other's silence, ‹But this is the end. Our kind has no need for your sort of affection and yet... for you, I have felt more than any other.› He draws their -- no, _Alloran's_ \-- tail blade up, touching the unguarded neck.

But Alloran gives no sign of fear and oh, isn't there a word for that?

‹Shorm,› Alloran supplies, speaking at last.

Esplin feels a surge of fatigue, old beyond his years though he is still ages younger than Alloran.

‹Yes,› he answers, crinkling his -- their -- eyes one last time. ‹Shorm.›

He hits Alloran in the head with the back of his blade, knocking him out before crawling out one final time.

-

10.

It is like a dream, those past three decades, and Alloran is uncertain if he is dreaming anew altogether at the end of it.

‹Yeerk scum,› he says for old times' sake at the end of it, disquieted by the tranquility in his own mind.


End file.
